the pros and cons of assholes

The Not 100% Complete FAQs for the Pretty Fucked Up Person in a Pretty Fucked Up World

So what is that cattle prod doing up the asses of all those assholes on the planet? Why do they exist anyway? What fucking makes them like that? And even more importantly, what are you supposed to do about the dilemma they put you in?

The answer to what makes assholes like that is so boring it's barely even worth mentioning. Bad chemicals of course. Some researchers think it's serotonin, the same chemical that makes you all depressed when you don't have it. Assholes have too much of it. In fact, assholes are serotonin sucks - they suck all the serotonin out of everyone else in the room, slather it on their own neurons, and leave everyone else all depressed and serotonin-deprived. Greedy fucking serotonin hogs!

Women who've been abused by assholes for an extended period will often show signs of low serotonin, act all wussy, whiny, and depressed, go on Prozac and bounce right back and then kick the asshole out of their life. Psychiatrists who first noticed this thought 'well that's weird.' But it isn't weird at all, these women had low serotonin because the goddamn fucking assholes in their lives stole all their fucking serotonin! The assholes in your life will steal yours! Guard your serotonin!

It works like this. Assholes are born. Their little itsy-bitsy nervous systems are all hyper-sensitive and easily irritated by the slightest little fucking thing. This makes them fussy and irritable and hateful and nobody likes them not even their mothers because they cry all the time. So their mothers do the best they can but already the little suckers are stealing their mother's serotonin and making them all depressed because nothing they fucking do will stop that goddamn constant fucking irritableness and crying and distress (which as we saw before is the equivalent of torture for their mothers). So their mothers are forced to pretend they love them but really they don't. And this sets up the first reality of an Asshole's existence.

What it's like to be an Asshole Reality No. 1: Everybody hates you and nobody fucking loves you.

It may seem kind of unfair that anyone is doomed to be hated by everyone and loved by no one from birth by the cruel realities of a central nervous system in a bad mood. But the truth is, assholes get used to it. I don't know that this is exactly the same as totally loving it but they get used to it. Actually, there are two kinds of assholes. Asshole #1: I Love Being An Asshole! and Asshole #2: I Hate Being An Asshole!

It's okay to employ the Compassion Response and feel sorry for Asshole #2 who is doomed to a lonely life of asshole misery because his mother didn't love him because he cried all the time and wouldn't shut up. But we are not here to engage in social work at the moment, we're here to waste time. So we are going to skip right past an extended Compassion Response and get on with the story. (The guy is an Asshole after all.) (Sudden sexism note. Assholeness is widely dispersed among all sexes, ages, races, religions, and even hair colors. But by and large we are going to refer to all assholes herein as 'he'. We will do this for 2 reasons. 1) We are lazy. 2) We are sexist. In case you were wondering.)

So his mother doesn't love him and neither does anyone else, but of course he is a kid and so they all kind of have to pretend they do. This sets up the second reality of an Asshole's existence.

What It's Like to Be An Asshole Reality #2: Everyone lies to you and pretends they love you more than they do, which is not at all, not really.

What people actually do to Assholes is use them. We will explain why in an extremely exciting Chimp Story! later but for right now, we'll just say that assholes may be assholes but they are not necessarily stupid. They figure out that people lie to them and use them and don't really love them. Which is why they are all paranoid and suspicious and controlling all the time. They fucking know you are lying to them. Which is exactly what you are doing if things are going right.

Your asshole boss calls a meeting and makes all these big pronouncements about making the numbers for the 2nd quarter and he's disappointed in everyone and they have to work harder and just reams of threats and bullshit and intimidation and not listening to anyone come flying out of his mouth, yada, yada, yada, and inside you are rolling your eyes, and mocking his pomposity. But you know no matter how fucking idiotic his business ideas may be, he'll yell at you if you tell him you can't sell six fucking million widgets in 36 days. So in front of him you act all submissive like you're going to sell 6 million widgets in 36 days, and then you yell at everyone who works for you and you roll your eyes when you talk about him and you basically mock him to shreds behind his back and suck up to his face. He knows you're doing this. He suspects everyone is doing this. Because almost everyone is. That's how people treat assholes. He's not an idiot. He's figured that out. And he's paranoid about it. All your best assholes are paranoid.

Look around at the assholes littered around your life. Look at how fucking paranoid they are really. They control everyone with their anger and they're fucking paranoid. You can hear it in all their reasoning processes. They should be paranoid! Everyone hates them!

Now it's time for the chimp story. Assholes are big chimpanzees! I suppose it would be better and more exciting if assholes were actually blood-sucking slime or something more exotic but actually they are just plain old chimpanzees.

Chimpanzee world is highly social world organized around the Asshole Exploitation Ploy - an evolutionary ploy that has worked decently well for them over the years. In this set-up a small number of so-called Alpha Males (or Asshole Chimpanzees) run around their little chimpanzee clump beating up other non-alpha males (B-Monkeys), forcing themselves on the fertile female chimpanzees, knocking them around, dragging them around by their chimpanzee fur, acting like assholes, clubbing their competitors over the head with whatever they can find, picking fights, and forcing all the other chimpanzees to suck up to them in elaborate shows of terrified submission.

When a competing band of chimpanzees nears, the Asshole Chimpanzee throws rocks at them, tries to kill them, and gets in really vicious bloody fights with his counterpart Asshole Chimpanzees from the competing clump until at least one Asshole Chimpanzee is dead or fleeing for its fucking life, humiiated, terrified, and whipped. Then the winning Asshole Chimpanzee swaggers back to his clump, grabs all the best women for himself, treats them like shit, fucks like a rabbit and nobody says a word about it. All the other chimps act scared and look the other way. Nobody tries to stop his indiscrimnate mating, and all the B-Monkeys back off mating themselves and let the Asshole Chimpanzee push them around.

The Asshole Chimpanzee's entire life is organized around aggression and pushing other chimpanzees around. It's ugly. It's a really ugly-looking little social system and all you primate-loving pussies out there can just pipe down, they're not pretty just because they're endangered animals and Jane Goodall loved them, they're vicious, ugly-looking asshole brutes. Or so it seems. Why do all the chimpanzees put up with this? Why do they let themselves be exploited by a tiny minority of Asshole Chimpanzees who dominate everything, the women, the food, the resources, the status? Why, why do the B-Monkeys and the females let themselves be ruthlessly exploited, dominated, and cowed by some over-endowed pushy monkey?

They don't. The Asshole Chimpanzees don't exploit them, they exploit the Asshole Chimpanzees. The Asshole Chimpanzees don't dominate shit, the B-Monkeys and the females have always dominated and they always will. The same thing goes for humans. The reason assholes exist on this planet is that they were put there for your benefit, you B-Male you. The Assholes of the world don't exploit you, you exploit them.

Here's how it works. A reality of chimpanzee life is that they clump together and occasionally there will be pressure on territory from other competing clumps of chimps. When this happens, there has to be a way to settle the issue as to who's going to get what territory and what resources. That way is fighting it out. Just like humans.

Way back in evolutionary history, some chimpanzee got saddled with an irritable nervous system and when it came time for a fight between chimp clumps he just went fucking bonkers and bashed all the competing chimps over the head with rocks and killed them. He was an absolute fucking maniac. He got himself all bloodied up, and did all that impressive chimp screeching and generally scared the holy fucking shit out of the competing clump, or what was left of it, which went scampering away, muttering to themselves 'psycho! that guy's a fucking psycho!' Which he was. He didn't react normally to the infliction of pain on others and he was completely out of control in reacting to his own. He was a flipping freak.

Now all the B-Monkeys were standing around watching this impressive display of maniacism and a little collective light bulb went off over their heads. Now up to this time, Psycho Chimp had just been a pain in the ass because he couldn't follow the normal social rules. He didn't understand reciprocity and he was all jumpy about everything and just generally a goddamn fucking pain.

But now, wordlessly, all the B-Monkeys realized something. When it comes to a fight, let Alpha-Monkey do it! They suddenly understood the usefulness of this prick. Why the fuck should they risk their precious fur when there's some maniac just dying to bash chimpanzees over the head for them? Let him take the fucking risk. Let him get himself beat to a bloody pulp. Let him die if he doesn't win. Let Mikey do it.

Slow secret smiles spread over their faces and they didn't say a word. They knew that from now on, any time there's danger from other chimpanzees, all they have to do is shove idiot alpha-monkey at it, and let him take care of the problem. He's obviously too stupid to realize that there's no particular percentage gain in roaring out toward a bunch of competing monkeys and picking a gigantic fight.

Well oblivious to the plot against him, Asshole Chimpanzee is all pumped up from his victorious head-smashing endeavors. He's primed, he's horny. He starts grabbing females. The B-Monkeys look at each other, after all there are a bunch of them and only one of him. But in the clever style of political strategists everywhere, they simply say 'oh all yours Asshole Chimp, I mean most esteemed Alpha Male. Wouldn't dream of competing with you for a female. Not at all. You first. Please. With my compliments.' Asshole Chimp grunts, grabs the best female and starts fucking. She, understandably alarmed, looks at the B-males who used to be her friends with an extreme 'What the fuck?' expression on her face. So behind A-Monkey's back, they all whisper, 'just go along with it. i'll explain in a minute.'

Asshole Chimp, not being all that good at sensitivity to other chimps, fucks and leaves for another one, and the female, somewhat the worse for wear, hisses at the b-males 'what the fuck was that about! he nearly fucking killed me!' Then the B-monkeys fill her in on the plan.

She is extremely dubious at first. It certainly doesn't sound like a good deal to her. But they lay it out. 'Listen, just go along with him. Pretend like 'oh he's the big conquering god, blah, blah, blah.' he's an idiot. he doesn't know shit. But he scored territory for us and the bananas are rolling in like crazy. We're all going to be rich. Just play cool and we'll all make out.' She's still not convinced. 'I don't want to have that creep's baby chimpanzees!' 'Who says you have to,' counter the B-Monkeys. 'Fuck anyone you want to. Shit, girl, there's a whole fucking defeated clump of cute male chimpanzees 600 yards down the road. He'll never know. Listen, some of those defeated chimps were hunks. Good genes, great fur, and I know they'd go for a looker like you.'

The female chimp thinks it over. Like sex brains everywhere, hers does have a thing for genetic diversity. And it would make things less complicated than sustaining a lot of social relationships within the clump. The B-Males press home the point. 'Listen, macho guy over there is going to be bringing home the bananas, right? Well if you play along those bananas are going to go to your baby chimpanzees. He won't have any fucking idea those baby chimps aren't his.' Well this seals the deal. It's worth the risk. It's worth putting up with Thinks He's So Fucking Great Asshole Chimp, and sneaking around behind his back to fuck better-looking, nicer, non-asshole B-Monkeys from some other tribe if it means your kids are going to get good genes and plenty of food, courtesy of the Asshole Who Doesn't Know What's Going On.

And this is exactly what female chimps do. They act all submissive when Mr. Alpha-chimp is around, and as soon as he turns his back, they scoot 600 yards down the jungle and start doing the wild thing with someone they really like. Yeah, sure, they have an occasional Alpha-chimp offspring. But not nearly as many as he thinks. Meanwhile, sure enough, all the other monkeys cover for the cheating female (oh you know, she's uh...over at her mother's. Yeah, that's the ticket, she's at her mother's). It's been observed, how they cover for philandering females. It's a chimp clump-wide conspiracy.

Meanwhile, the B-Males loll around doing as little as possible. 'Oh you're the boss, Asshole, I mean Alpha, you're definitely the boss. Anything you say sir, yes sir, not touching your females, no sir,' etc. Then as soon as the guy's back is turned, they scamper off, fuck their brains out, scamper back, 'just doing a little grooming, sir, nothing special, nothing at all', wait til his back his turned, high-five each other, and snicker wildly. Meanwhile, Alpha-Chimp is securing the territory that will get them the best bananas, taking the risks, making the decisions, getting beat up, prowling restlessly, and being tolerated for the benefits he brings.

This is a relatively low cost strategy for the supposedly dominated males and females. In truth, they are not dominated at all. They have more offspring year in and year out and there are always more of them then there are of the Asshole Chimps. As long as the deception holds, they put up with some brutality, some getting shoved around, some real pain in the ass encounters with the Chimp Who Has No Manners, and they have to act submissive while he's around. But that's jack as far as costs go when you consider not getting killed by other monkeys, scooping up the benefits of those luscious resource rich territories the guy's always defending and having adorable baby chimpanzees that carry your superior non-Asshole genes. It's a complete fucking scam!

Meanwhile, it's a relatively high-cost strategy for the Asshole Chimp but a livable one. In return for taking the risks, doing the beating up, and getting beat up, he has first access to the best mates, the best food, and the best services of everyone else in the clump when he needs something. In reality, odds are, he's going to live a comparatively short brutal life. He'll get old and not physically able to defend his territory. He'll get clubbed over the head by some other Alpha Chimp, maybe even his own son. He'll get beat up, he'll die, and chances are no one will fight that hard to save him. There's always some other Asshole Chimp ready to take his place. It's not like the chimp clump has any loyalty to him personally. They just need someone to fill his role. They'll let him die. But while he's alive, he'll be sure to reproduce. In fact, the clump wants him to because they want someone to fill that niche. They're not about to start putting their own asses on the line at this point. So he'll live hard and die hard. He'll fuck, he'll eat, he'll swagger, he'll fight, he'll go at it with everything's he got. He has to. It's his only choice. It's too late now. The clump won't tolerate him under any other conditions. His entire life will be spent defending himself against every other single chimp he ever encounters. Everyone is against him. And everyone uses him. And if that's the way it's going to be, he's sure as fuck going to live high while the going is good.

Some humans, lucky or not, were just simply fucking born to be chimps. It may be a primitive phenomenon, but it works. Assholes run the corporations that make everyone else rich. Assholes take the risks that no one else wants to take. Assholes make the decisions that no one else wants to bother with. Assholes run nations, when running a nation is a good way to get nothing but plotted against, overthrown, booted out of power, exiled, and assassinated. But in the meantime, they'll build the fucking roads and industries and whatever it fucking takes to make them seem like a big deal asshole to themselves, and they'll keep a lid on all those otherwise annoying junior freelance assholes who otherwise run around any society. Assholes bring home the bananas.

They make more money than you because they're supposed to. That's the bargain. They build the fucking railroads, the fiber optic networks, the toilet supplies businesses - they run Microsoft, and Apple, and America Online, they invent the lightbulb, they win the wars, they build Disneyland, and they create Nazi Germany. They're versatile, assholes are, and we hate them. But we made a bargain with them a long fucking time ago. And as long as we all keep whining and moaning and bitching about them and pretending we're scared of them....they'll keep bringing home the bananas.

Next - the complicated sexual politics of assholes....

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The Not 100% Complete FAQs for the Pretty Fucked Up Person in a Pretty Fucked Up World

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